Terex City Crane AC55-1 Steering System Operating Manual

Terex City Crane AC55-1 Steering

System Operating Manual
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Terex City Crane AC55-1 Steering System Operating Manual

Operating Manual Model: Terex AC55-1 City Mobile Crane Safety Steering System
Operating Manual Contents : \- Electric \- Hydraulic \- AC55 City Fail Operational
Auxililiary Steering System_EN \- AC55 City Steering Notes \- Alarm list
Terex-Demag V0200 deutsch \- Alarm list Terex-Demag V0200 englisch \- Axle
Safety Steering System_Deutsch \- DOS PCS AC55 City Lenkwinkel \- Fail
Operational Auxililiary Steering System_Deutsch_BA18302_DE \- Flash Parameter
\- PCS \- Safety Steering System Operating
Manual_Deutsch_BA19410_DE_V0200 \- Safety Steering System Operating
Manual_EN_BA19410_E_V0200
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and wrote articles for legal magazines. He went little into society,
because he preferred his books. Judge Story, a man twice his own
age, became his most devoted friend, and to the end of his life
Sumner loved him as a brother.
Chief Justice Story, whom Lord Brougham called the "greatest justice
in the world," was a man of singularly sweet nature, appreciative of
the beautiful and the pure, as well as a man of profound learning.
The influence of such a lovable and strong nature over an ambitious
youth, who can estimate?
The few friends Sumner made among women were, as a rule, older
than himself, a thing not unusual with intellectual men. He chose
those whose minds were much like his own, and who were
appreciative, refining, and stimulating. Brain and heart seemed to be
the only charms which possessed any fascination for him.
The eminent sculptor, W. W. Story of Rome, says, "Of all men I ever
knew at his age, he was the least susceptible to the charms of
women. Men he liked best, and with them he preferred to talk. It
was in vain for the loveliest and liveliest girl to seek to absorb his
attention. He would at once desert the most blooming beauty to talk
to the plainest of men. This was a constant source of amusement to
us, and we used to lay wagers with the pretty girls that with all their
art they could not keep him at their side a quarter of an hour. Nor do
I think we ever lost one of these bets. I remember particularly one
dinner at my father's house, when it fell to his lot to take out a
charming woman, so handsome and full of esprit that any one at the
table might well have envied him his position. She had determined
to hold him captive, and win her bet against us. But her efforts were
all in vain. Unfortunately, on his other side was a dry old savant,
packed with information; and within five minutes Sumner had
completely turned his back on his fair companion and engaged in a
discussion with the other, which lasted the whole dinner. We all
laughed. She cast up her eyes deprecatingly, acknowledged herself
vanquished, and paid her bet. Meantime, Sumner was wholly
unconscious of the jest or of the laughter. He had what he wanted—
sensible men's talk. He had mined the savant as he mined every one
he met, in search of ore, and was thoroughly pleased with what he
got."
In manner Sumner was natural and sincere, friendly to all, winning
at the first moment by his radiant smile. A sunny face is a constant
benediction. How it blesses and lifts burdens from aching hearts!
Sumner had heart-aches like all the rest of mankind, but his face
beamed with that open, kindly expression which is as sweet to
hungering humanity as the sunshine after rain. And this "genial
illuminating smile," says Mr. Story, "he never lost."
These days in the law school were happy days for the lover of
learning. Forty years afterward, Mr. Sumner said, in an address to
the colored law students of Howard University, Washington, "These
exercises carry me back to early life.... I cannot think of those days
without fondness. They were the happiest of my life.... There is
happiness in the acquisition of knowledge, which surpasses all
common joys. The student who feels that he is making daily
progress, constantly learning something new,—who sees the
shadows by which he was originally surrounded gradually exchanged
for an atmosphere of light,—cannot fail to be happy. His toil
becomes a delight, and all that he learns is a treasure,—with this
difference from gold and silver, that it cannot be lost. It is a
perpetual capital at compound interest."
While at the law school, Sumner wrote a friend, "A lawyer must
know everything. He must know law, history, philosophy, human
nature; and, if he covets the fame of an advocate, he must drink of
all the springs of literature, giving ease and elegance to the mind,
and illustration to whatever subject it touches. So experience
declares, and reflection bears experience out.... The lower floor of
Divinity Hall, where I reside, is occupied by law students. There are
here Browne and Dana of our old class, with others that I know
nothing of,—not even my neighbor, parted from me by a partition
wall, have I seen yet, and I do not wish to see him. I wish no
acquaintances, for they eat up time like locusts. The old class-mates
are enough." To another he wrote, "Determine that you will master
the whole compass of law; and do not shrink from the crabbed page
of black-letter, the multitudinous volumes of reports, or even the
gigantic abridgments. Keep the high standard in your mind's eye,
and you will certainly reach some desirable point.... You cannot read
history too much, particularly that of England and the United States.
History is the record of human conduct and experience; and it is to
this that jurisprudence is applied.... Above all love and honor your
profession. You can make yourself love the law, proverbially dry as it
is, or any other study. Here is an opportunity for the exercise of the
will. Determine that you will love it, and devote yourself to it as to a
bride."
When the study at the law school was over, Sumner returned to
Boston, and entered the office of Benjamin Rand, Court Street, a
man distinguished for learning rather than for oratory. The young
lawyer succeeded fairly well, though he loved study better than
general practice. Two years later he gave instruction at the law
school when Judge Story was absent, and then reported his opinions
in the Circuit Court, in three volumes. He assisted Professor
Greenleaf in preparing "Reports of the Decisions of the Supreme
Court of Maine," revised, with much labor, Dunlap's "Admiralty
Practice," and edited "The American Jurist."
In the midst of this hard work he spent a brief vacation at
Washington, writing to his father, "I shall probably hear Calhoun,
and he will be the last man I shall ever hear speak in Washington. I
probably shall never come here again. I have little or no desire ever
to come again in any capacity. Nothing that I have seen of politics
has made me look upon them with any feeling other than loathing.
The more I see of them the more I love law, which, I feel, will give
me an honorable livelihood."
When he visited Niagara, he wrote home, "I have sat for an hour
contemplating this delightful object, with the cataract sounding like
the voice of God in my ears. But there is something oppressive in
hearing and contemplating these things. The mind travails with
feelings akin to pain, in the endeavor to embrace them. I do not
know that it is so with others; but I cannot disguise from myself the
sense of weakness, inferiority, and incompetency which I feel."
When Sumner was twenty-six, he determined to carry out a life-long
plan of visiting Europe, to study its writers, jurists, and social
customs. He needed five thousand dollars for this purpose. He had
earned two thousand, and, borrowing three from three friends, he
started December 8, 1837. Emerson gave him a letter of introduction
to Carlyle, Story to some leading lawyers, and Washington Allston to
Wordsworth. Judge Story said in his letter, "Mr. Sumner is a
practising lawyer at the Boston bar, of very high reputation for his
years, and already giving the promise of the most eminent
distinction in his profession; his literary and judicial attainments are
truly extraordinary. He is one of the editors, indeed, the principal
editor, of 'The American Jurist,' a quarterly journal of extensive
circulation and celebrity among us, and without a rival in America.
He is also the reporter of the court in which I preside, and has
already published two volumes of reports. His private character, also,
is of the best kind for purity and propriety."
His friend Dr. Lieber gave him some good suggestions about
travelling. "Plan your journey. Spend money carefully. Keep steadily a
journal. Never think that an impression is too vivid to be forgotten.
Believe me, time is more powerful than senses or memory. Keep
little books for addresses. Write down first impressions of men and
countries."
Just before Sumner started from New York, he wrote to his little
sister, Julia, then ten years old, "I am very glad, my dear, to
remember your cheerful countenance.... Let it be said of you that
you are always amiable.... Cultivate an affectionate disposition. If
you find that you can do anything which will add to the pleasure of
your parents, or anybody else, be sure to do it. Consider every
opportunity of adding to the pleasure of others as of the highest
importance, and do not be unwilling to sacrifice some enjoyment of
your own, even some dear plaything, if by doing so you can promote
the happiness of others. If you follow this advice, you will never be
selfish or ungenerous, and everybody will love you."
To his brother George, six years younger than himself, he wrote, "Do
not waste your time in driblets. Deem every moment precious,—far
more so than the costliest stones.... Keep some good book
constantly on hand to occupy every stray moment."
As soon as Sumner reached Paris he devoted himself to the study of
the language, so as to be able to speak what he could write already.
He attended lectures given by the professors of colleges, became
acquainted with Victor Cousin, the noted writer on morals and
metaphysics, and the friend of authors, lawyers, and journalists. He
said, years later, in an eloquent tribute to Judge Story: "It has been
my fortune to know the chief jurists of our time in the classical
countries of jurisprudence,—France and Germany. I remember well
the pointed and effective style of Dupin, in one of his masterly
arguments before the highest court of France; I recall the pleasant
converse of Pardessus, to whom commercial and maritime law is
under a larger debt, perhaps, than to any other mind, while he
descanted on his favorite theme; I wander in fancy to the gentle
presence of him with flowing silver locks who was so dear to
Germany, Thibaut, the expounder of Roman law, and the earnest
and successful advocate of a just scheme for the reduction of the
unwritten law to the certainty of a written text; from Heidelberg I
pass to Berlin, where I listen to the grave lecture and mingle in the
social circle of Savigny, so stately in person and peculiar in
countenance, whom all the continent of Europe delights to honor;
but my heart and my judgment, untravelled, fondly turn with new
love and admiration to my Cambridge teacher and friend.
Jurisprudence has many arrows in her quiver, but where is one to
compare with that which is now spent in the earth?"
After some months in Paris, Sumner went to England, remaining ten
months, and receiving attentions rarely if ever accorded to an
American. He used some letters of introduction, but generally he
was welcomed to the houses of lords and authors simply because
the young man of learning was honored for his refinement and
nobility of soul. He was admitted to the clubs, attended debates in
Parliament, was present at the coronation of Queen Victoria in
Westminster Abbey, sat on the bench at Westminster Hall, dined
often with Lord Brougham, Sir William Hamilton, Jeffrey of the
Edinburgh Review, Lord Morpeth the Chief Secretary for Ireland,
Hallam, Carlyle, Lord Holland, Lord Houghton, Grote, Sydney Smith,
Macaulay, Landor, Leigh Hunt, and scores of others, the greatest in
the kingdom. An English writer said: "He presents in his own person
a decisive proof that an American gentleman, without official rank or
widespread reputation, by mere dint of courtesy, candor, an entire
absence of pretension, an appreciating spirit, and a cultivated mind,
may be received on a perfect footing of equality in the best English
circles, social, political, and intellectual."
Sumner wrote back to his friends in America: "I have made myself
master of English practice and English circuit life. I cannot
sufficiently express my admiration of the heartiness and cordiality
which pervade all the English bar. They are truly a band of brothers,
and I have been received among them as one of them. I have
visited many—perhaps I may say most—of the distinguished men of
these glorious countries (England, Scotland, and Ireland), at their
seats, and have seen English country life, which is the height of
refined luxury, in some of its most splendid phases. For all the
opportunities I have had I feel grateful."
Sumner found, what all travellers find, that cultivated, well bred
people all speak a common language, that of universal courtesy and
kindness. The English did not ask if he had wealth or distinguished
parentage; it was enough that he was intelligent on all topics,
considerate, gentle in manner, a gentleman in every possible
situation.
Every letter home teemed with descriptions of visits to Wordsworth,
then sixty-nine years of age; to Macaulay, whom Sydney Smith
called "a tremendous machine for colloquial oppression;" to the
beautiful Caroline Norton, the poet, "one of the brightest intellects I
have ever met," with "the grace and ease of the woman, with a
strength and skill of which any man might well be proud;" to Lord
Brougham, with "a fulness of information and physical spirits, which
make him more commanding than all."
Sumner spent three months in Rome, at first studying the language
from six to twelve hours a day. He became the friend of the artist
Thomas Crawford, then poor, but with high ambition. He wrote his
praises home to his friends, induced them to buy one of his earliest
works and exhibit it in Boston; cheered the half-despairing artist by
assuring him that he would be "a great and successful sculptor, and
be living in a palace," all of which came true. A noble nature, indeed,
that could pause in its own aspiring work and lift another to fame
and success!
Six months were spent in Germany by Sumner, where he studied
language and law as earnestly as he had in France and Italy. The
rich, full days of literary intercourse were coming to an end. He
wrote to his intimate friend Longfellow: "I shall soon be with you;
and I now begin to think of hard work, of long days filled with
uninteresting toil and humble gains. I sometimes have a moment of
misgiving, when I think of the certainties which I abandoned for
travel, and of the uncertainties to which I return. But this is
momentary; for I am thoroughly content with what I have done. If
clients fail me; if the favorable opinion of those on whom
professional reputation depends leaves me; if I find myself poor and
solitary,—still I shall be rich in the recollection of what I have seen,
and will make companions of the great minds of these countries I
have visited."
In the spring of 1840 Sumner was home again, having been abroad
for two and one-half years. The father and his sister Jane, a lovely
girl of seventeen, had both died during his absence. He went at once
to the Hancock Street home, and began his professional labors from
nine till five or six in the afternoon. In the evening he read as
formerly till midnight or later, going every Saturday evening to spend
the night with Longfellow at Craigie House.
This affection for Longfellow never changed. When the poet went
abroad in 1842, Sumner wrote him, "We are all sad at your going;
but I am more sad than the rest, for I lose more than they do. I am
desolate. It was to me a source of pleasure and strength untold to
see you; and, when I did not see you, to feel that you were near,
with your swift sympathy and kindly words. I must try to go alone,—
hard necessity in this rude world of ours, for our souls always in this
life need support and gentle beckonings, as the little child when first
trying to move away from its mother's knee. God bless you, my dear
friend, from my heart of hearts. My eyes overflow as I now trace
these lines."
Sumner was full of incident and vivid description of his life abroad,
and the most charming homes of Boston were open to him
whenever he had the time to visit, which was seldom. The letters
from Europe made the long days of law practice less monotonous.
He wrote much on legal matters; and now, at thirty-three, undertook
to edit the "Equity Reports" of Francis Vesey, Jr., numbering twenty
volumes, for two thousand dollars. By the terms agreed upon, a
volume was to be ready each fortnight. He worked night and day,
took no recreation, and soon broke down in health; and his life was
despaired of. He welcomed death, for he had before this time
become somewhat despondent. Most of his friends were married,
and some, like Prescott and Longfellow, had come to fame already.
He felt that his life was not showing the results of which his youth
gave promise.
Had he found at this time "the perfect woman" for whom he used to
tell his friends he was seeking, and made her his wife, there would
doubtless have come into his life satisfaction and rest. That he did
not marry was the more strange since women admired him for the
qualities which are especially attractive to the sex; a knightly sense
of honor, fidelity in friendship, fearlessness, and affectionate
confidence.
Sumner recovered his health, while his beloved sister Mary, at the
age of twenty-two, faded from his sight by consumption. He wrote
his brother George: "She herself wished to die; and I believe that we
all became anxious at last that the angel should descend to bear her
aloft. From the beautiful flower of her life the leaves had all gently
fallen to the earth; and there remained but little for the hand of
death to pluck. During the night preceding the morning on which
she left us, she slept like a child; and within a short time of her
death, when asked if she were in pain, she said, 'No; angels are
taking care of me.'"
To Charles Sumner this death was an incomparable loss. She was
especially beautiful and lovely, and the idol of his heart. Possibly it
helped to make him ready for his great work.
Into most lives, especially those designed for great deeds, there
seem to come decisive moments when events open the door from
the darkness of obscurity into the noonday glare of fame. Such a
time came to Sumner in 1845. He was asked to deliver the usual
Fourth of July address at Tremont Temple, Boston, as Charles Francis
Adams, Horace Mann, and others had done in previous years. He
chose for his subject "The True Grandeur of Nations," showing that
the "true grandeur" is peace and not war. He dealt vigorously with
the Mexican War, then impending, as a result of the annexation of
Texas, with consequent enlargement of slave territory.
Sumner was now thirty-four, well developed physically, his face
handsome and radiant as ever, with the smile of his boyhood, his
voice clear and resonant, his mind full to overflowing. He spoke for
two hours, without notes. He said: "The true greatness of a nation
cannot be in triumphs of the intellect alone. Literature and art may
widen the sphere of its influence; they may adorn it; but they are in
their nature but accessories. The true grandeur of humanity is in
moral elevation, sustained, enlightened, and decorated by the
intellect of man.... In our age there can be no peace that is not
honorable; there can be no war that is not dishonorable. The true
honor of a nation is to be found only in deeds of justice and
beneficence, securing the happiness of its people,—all of which are
inconsistent with war. In the clear eye of Christian judgment, vain
are its victories, infamous are its spoils. He is the true benefactor,
and alone worthy of honor, who brings comfort where before was
wretchedness; who dries the tear of sorrow; who pours oil into the
wounds of the unfortunate; who feeds the hungry, and clothes the
naked; who unlooses the fetter of the slave; who does justice; who
enlightens the ignorant; who, by his virtuous genius in art, in
literature, in science, enlivens and exalts the hours of life; who, by
words or actions, inspires a love for God and for man. This is the
Christian hero; this is the man of honor in a Christian land."
The believers in war felt somewhat hurt by Sumner's plainness of
speech, but the city of Boston and the State of Massachusetts awoke
to the knowledge of an eloquent man in their midst, who had
doubtless a work before him. Mrs. Lydia Maria Child wrote him:
"How I did thank you for your noble and eloquent attack upon the
absurd barbarism of war! It was worth living for to have done that, if
you never do anything more. But the soul that could do that will do
more."
Chancellor Kent wrote him, "I am very strongly in favor of the
institution of a congress of nations or system of arbitration without
going to war. Every effort ought to be made by treaty stipulation,
remonstrance, and appeal to put a stop to the resort to brutal force
to assert claims of right. The idea of war is horrible. I remember I
was very much struck, even in my youth, by the observation (I think
it was in Tom Paine's 'Crisis') that 'he who is the author of war lets
loose the whole contagion of hell, and opens a vein that bleeds a
nation to death.'"
Seven thousand copies of this oration were distributed by the Peace
Societies of England, and it had a wide reading in our own country.
Sumner was now called upon to speak with Garrison, Phillips, and
others, on the question of the annexation of Texas with her slave
territory. He said, "God forbid that the votes and voices of the
freemen of the North should help to bind anew the fetters of the
slave! God forbid that the lash of the slave-dealer should be nerved
by any sanction from New England! God forbid that the blood which
spurts from the lacerated quivering flesh of the slave should soil the
hem of the white garments of Massachusetts."
The educated Boston lawyer, the friend of hosts of authors and
jurists on both sides of the ocean, the accomplished and aristocratic
scholar, Sumner had placed himself among the despised
Abolitionists! Many of his friends stood aghast, even refusing to
recognize him on the street. This act required great moral heroism,
but he was equal to the occasion. The door had opened to fame and
immortality, even though they came to him through contumely and
well-nigh martyrdom.
In 1846, Mr. Sumner spoke before the Phi Beta Kappa Society of
Harvard University: "We stand on the threshold of a new age, which
is preparing to recognize new influences. The ancient divinities of
violence and wrong are retreating to their kindred darkness. The sun
of our moral universe is entering a new ecliptic, no longer deformed
by those images, Cancer, Taurus, Leo, Sagittarius, but beaming with
the mild radiance of those heavenly signs, Faith, Hope, and Charity.
"'There's a fount about to stream;
There's a light about to beam;
There's a warmth about to glow;
There's a flower about to blow;
There's a midnight blackness changing
Into gray:
Men of thought and men of action,
Clear the way!'"
Theodore Parker wrote to the orator, "You have planted a seed, 'out
of which many and tall branches shall arise,' I hope. The people are
always true to a good man who truly trusts them. You have had
opportunity to see, hear, and feel the truth of that oftener than
once. I think you will have enough more opportunities yet; men will
look for deeds noble as the words a man speaks."
And Charles Sumner became as noble as the words he had spoken.
It makes us stronger to commit ourselves before the world. We are
compelled to live up to the standard of our speech, or be adjudged
hypocrites.
Before the Boston Mercantile Library Association, Sumner read a
brilliant paper on "White Slavery in the Barbary States," and gave an
address before Amherst College on "Fame and Glory." He spoke
earnestly in the Whig conventions, asking them to come out against
slavery. He urged Daniel Webster, the Defender of the Constitution,
to become the "Defender of Humanity," "by the side of which that
earlier title shall fade into insignificance, as the Constitution, which is
the work of mortal hands, dwindles by the side of man, who is
created in the image of God." But the words of entreaty came too
late; the Whig party did not dare take up the cause of human
freedom.
In 1851, when Sumner was forty, the new era of his life came. The
Free-Soil party, organized August 9, 1848, the successor of the
"Liberty" party formed eight years earlier, wanted him as their leader.
Would he separate from the Whigs? Yes, for he had said, "Loyalty to
principle is higher than loyalty to party. The first is a heavenly
sentiment from God; the other is a device of this earth.... I wish it to
be understood that I belong to the party of freedom,—to that party
which plants itself on the Declaration of Independence and the
Constitution of the United States.... It is said that we shall throw
away our votes, and that our opposition will fail. Fail, sir! No honest,
earnest effort in a good cause ever fails. It may not be crowned with
the applause of man; it may not seem to touch the goal of
immediate worldly success, which is the end and aim of so much of
life; but still it is not lost. It helps to strengthen the weak with new
virtue, to arm the irresolute with proper energy, to animate all with
devotion to duty, which in the end conquers all. Fail! Did the martyrs
fail when with their precious blood they sowed the seed of the
Church?... Did the three hundred Spartans fail when, in the narrow
pass, they did not fear to brave the innumerable Persian hosts,
whose very arrows darkened the sun? No! Overborne by numbers,
crushed to earth, they have left an example which is greater far than
any victory. And this is the least we can do. Our example shall be the
source of triumph hereafter."
Millard Fillmore had signed the hated Fugitive Slave Bill, and Webster
had made his disastrous speech of March 7, 1850, urging conformity
to the demands of the bill. Sumner's hour had come. By a union of
the Free-Soil and Democratic parties, he was elected to the Senate
of the United States for six years, over the eloquent Robert C.
Winthrop, the Whig candidate. The contest was bitter. Sumner would
give no pledges, and said he would not walk across the room to
secure the election. On Monday, December 1, 1851, he took his seat.
Devotion to principle had gained him an exalted position.
Months went by before he could possibly obtain a hearing on the
slavery question, on which issue he had been elected. Finally, the
long sought opportunity came by introducing an amendment that
the Fugitive Slave Bill should be repealed. He spoke for four hours as
only Charles Sumner could speak. Despised by the slave-holders,
they listened to his burning words. In closing, he said: "Be
admonished by those words of oriental piety,—'Beware of the groans
of wounded souls. Oppress not to the utmost a single heart; for a
solitary sigh has power to overset a whole world.'"
Mr. Polk of Tennessee said to him: "If you should make that speech
in Tennessee, you would compel me to emancipate my niggers."
The vote on the repeal stood: Yeas, four; nays, forty-seven. Alas!
how many years he wrought before the repeal came.
Sumner had been heard not merely by Congress; he had been heard
by two continents. Henceforward, for twenty-three years, he was to
be in Congress the great leader in the cause of human freedom.
In 1854 the advocates of slavery brought forward the Kansas-
Nebraska Bill, by which a large territory, at the recommendation of
Stephen A. Douglas, was to be left open for slavery or no slavery, as
the dwellers therein should decide. On the night of the passage of
this bill, Sumner made an eloquent protest. "Sir, the bill which you
are now about to pass is at once the worst and the best bill on
which Congress ever acted. Yes, sir, WORST and BEST at the same
time.
"It is the worst bill, inasmuch as it is a present victory of slavery.... It
is the best, for it prepares the way for that 'All hail hereafter,' when
slavery must disappear.... Thus, sir, now standing at the very grave
of freedom in Kansas and Nebraska, I lift myself to the vision of that
happy resurrection by which freedom will be secured hereafter, not
only in these Territories but everywhere under the national
government. More clearly than ever before, I now see 'the beginning
of the end' of slavery. Proudly I discern the flag of my country as it
ripples in every breeze, at last become in reality, as in name, the flag
of freedom,—undoubted, pure, and irresistible. Am I not right, then,
in calling this bill the best on which Congress ever acted?
"Sorrowfully I bend before the wrong you are about to enact.
Joyfully I welcome all the promises of the future."
After the passage of the bill the excitement at the North was
intense. Public meetings were held, denouncing the new scheme of
the slave-power to acquire more territory. So bitter grew the feeling
that Sumner was urged by his friends to leave Washington, lest
harm come to him; but he walked the streets unarmed. "He was
assailed," said the noble Joshua R. Giddings of Ohio, "by the whole
slave-power in the Senate, and, for a time, he was the constant
theme of their vituperation. The maddened waves rolled and dashed
against him for two or three days, until eventually he obtained the
floor himself; then he arose and threw back the dashing surges with
a power of inimitable eloquence utterly indescribable."
The Kansas-Nebraska Bill produced its legitimate result,—civil war in
the Territory. Slave-holders rushed in from Missouri, bringing their
slaves with them; free men came from the East to build homes,
school-houses, and churches on these fertile lands. The struggles at
the ballot-box over illegal elections were followed by struggles on
the battle-field. At the village of Ossawatomie twenty-eight Free
State men led by John Brown defeated on the open prairie fifty-six
Slave State men. Houses were burned, and men murdered. Two
State constitutions were adopted: one at Lecompton, representing
the pro-slavery element; the other at Lawrence, representing the
anti-slavery party. Finally, the President, in 1855, appointed a
military governor to restore Kansas to order. But, while order might
be restored there, the whole country seemed on the verge of civil
war.
Meantime the Republican party had been formed in 1854, the
outgrowth of the "Liberty" and "Free Soil" parties. A "Bill for the
Admission of Kansas into the Union" having been presented, Sumner
made his celebrated speech "The Crime against Kansas," on the 19th
and 20th of May, 1856. He spoke eloquently and fearlessly, arousing
more than ever the hot blood of the South. Two days later, as Mr.
Sumner was sitting at his desk in the Senate chamber, his head bent
forward in writing, the Senate having adjourned, Preston S. Brooks,
a nephew of Mr. Butler, a senator of South Carolina, stood before
him. "I have read your speech twice over, carefully," he said. "It is a
libel on South Carolina and Mr. Butler, who is a relative of mine."
Instantly he struck Mr. Sumner on the back of the head, with his
hollow gutta-percha cane, making a long and fearful gash, repeating
the blows in rapid succession. Sumner wrenched the desk from the
floor, to which it was screwed, but, unable to defend himself, fell
forward bleeding and insensible. He was carried by his friends to a
sofa in the lobby, and during the night lay pale and bewildered,
scarcely speaking to any one about him.
The indignation and horror of the North beggar description. That a
man, in this age of free speech, should be publicly beaten, and that
by a member of the House of Representatives, was, of course, a
disgrace to the nation. Said Joseph Quincy: "Charles Sumner needs
not our sympathy. If he dies his name will be immortal—his name
will be enrolled with the names of Warren, Sidney, and Russell; if he
lives he is destined to be the light of the nation." Wendell Phillips
said: "The world will yet cover every one of those scars with laurels.
He must not die! We need him yet, as the van-guard leader of the
hosts of Liberty. Nay, he shall yet come forth from that sick-chamber,
and every gallant heart in the commonwealth be ready to kiss his
very footsteps."
Brooks was censured by the House of Representatives, resigned his
seat, and died the following year. Sumner returned to Boston as
soon as he was able. Houses were decorated for his coming, and
banners flung to the breeze with the words, "Welcome, Freedom's
Defender," "Massachusetts loves, honors, will sustain and defend her
noble Sumner." The home on Hancock Street was surrounded by a
dense crowd. He appeared at the window with his widowed mother,
and bowed to their cheers. For several months he enjoyed the
tender care of this mother, now almost alone. Her son Horace had
been lost in the ship Elizabeth, July 16, 1850, when Margaret Fuller,
her husband, and child were drowned. Albert, a sea-captain, had
been lost with his wife and only daughter on their way to France.
And now, perhaps, her distinguished son Charles was to give his life
to help bring freedom to four millions in slavery.
In 1857 Sumner was almost unanimously reëlected to the Senate for
six years, but Brooks had done his dreadful work too well. Broken in
health, he sailed for Europe. Nearly twenty years before he had gone
to meet the honored and famous, his future all unknown; now he
went as the stricken leader of a great cause, one of the most able
and eloquent men of the new world. Twenty years before he was
restless and unhappy because he did not see his life-work before
him; now he was happy in spite of physical agony, because he knew
he was helping humanity.
After travelling in Switzerland, Germany, and Great Britain, he
returned and took his seat in Congress, but, finding his health still
impaired, he sailed again to Europe. He regretted to leave the
country, but was, as he says, "often assured and encouraged to feel
that to every sincere lover of civilization my vacant chair was a
perpetual speech." On this second visit he came under the treatment
of Dr. Brown-Séquard, who, when asked by Mr. Sumner what would
cure him, replied, "Fire." At once the dreadful remedy was applied.
The physician says, when he first met the senator, "He could not
make use of his brain at all. He could not read a newspaper, could
not write a letter. He was in a frightful state as regards the activity of
the mind, as every effort there was most painful to him.... I told him
the truth,—that there would be more effect, as I thought, if he did
not take chloroform; and so I had to submit him to the martyrdom
of the greatest suffering that can be inflicted on mortal man. I
burned him with the first moxa. I had the hope that after the first
application he would submit to the use of chloroform; but for five
times after that he was burned in the same way, and refused to take
chloroform. I have never seen a patient who submitted to such
treatment in that way."
Sumner wrote home: "It is with a pang unspeakable that I find
myself thus arrested in the labors of life and in the duties of my
position. This is harder to bear than the fire."
Four years elapsed before he regained his health; indeed his death
finally resulted from the attack of Brooks. No sooner had he returned
to the Senate than he made another great speech against slavery.
The country was agitated by the coming presidential election. John
Brown had captured, with a force of twenty-two men, the United
States arsenal at Harper's Ferry, with the fallacious hope of setting
the slaves at liberty. He was of course overpowered, his sons killed
at his side, as others of his sons had been on the Kansas battlefields,
and he led out to execution, December 2, 1859, with a radiant face
and an overflowing heart, because he knew that his death would
arouse the nation to action.
Mr. Sumner spoke to an immense audience at Cooper Institute,
urging the election of Abraham Lincoln. By this election, he said, "we
shall save the Territories from the five-headed barbarism of slavery;
we shall save the country and the age from that crying infamy, the
slave-trade; we shall help save the Declaration of Independence,
now dishonored and disowned in its essential, life-giving truth,—the
equality of men.... A new order of things will begin; and our history
will proceed on a grander scale, in harmony with those sublime
principles in which it commenced. Let the knell sound!—
"'Ring out the old, ring in the new!
Ring out the false, ring in the true!
Ring out a slowly dying cause,
And ancient forms of party strife!
Ring in the nobler modes of life,
With sweeter manners, purer laws.'"
A "new order of things" was indeed begun. South Carolina very soon
seceded from the Union, and other southern States followed her
example. Sumner now spoke and wrote constantly. He urged
Massachusetts to be "firm, FIRM, FIRM! against every word or step of
concession.... More than the loss of forts, arsenals, or the national
capital, I fear the loss of our principles."
In 1861, Mr. Sumner was made chairman of the Committee on
Foreign Relations. How different his position from that day, ten years
before, when he stood almost alone in the Senate, a hated
abolitionist!
When the war began, he saw with prophetic eye the necessity of
emancipating the slaves. He urged it in his public speeches. When
Lincoln hesitated and the country feared the result, he said to a vast
assembly at Cooper Institute, "There has been the cry, 'On to
Richmond!' and still another worse cry, 'On to England!' Better than
either is the cry, 'On to freedom!'"
As the war went forward he was ever at his post, working for Henry
Wilson's bill for the abolishing of slavery in the District of Columbia,
for the recognition of the independence of Hayti and Liberia, for the
final suppression of the coastwise trade in slaves, for the
employment of colored troops in the army, and for a law that "no
person shall be excluded from the cars on account of color," on
various specified lines of railroad. He spoke words of encouragement
constantly to the North, "This is no time to stop. Forward! Forward!
Thus do I, who formerly pleaded so often for peace, now sound to
arms; but it is because, in this terrible moment, there is no other
way to that sincere and solid peace without which there will be
endless war.... Now, at last, by the death of slavery, will the republic
begin to live; for what is life without liberty?
"Stretching from ocean to ocean, teeming with population, bountiful
in resources of all kinds, and thrice happy in universal
enfranchisement, it will be more than conqueror, nothing too vast for
its power, nothing too minute for its care."
He wrote for the magazines on the one great subject. He helped
organize the Freedman's Bureau, which he called the "Bridge from
Slavery to Freedom." He urged equal pay to colored soldiers. He was
invaluable to President Lincoln. Though they did not always think
alike, Lincoln said to Sumner, "There is no person with whom I have
more advised throughout my administration than with yourself."
When Lincoln was assassinated, Sumner wept by his bedside. "The
only time," said an intimate friend, "I ever saw him weep." When he
delivered his eloquent eulogy on Lincoln in Boston, he said, "That
speech, uttered on the field of Gettysburg, and now sanctified by the
martyrdom of its author, is a monumental act. In the modesty of his
nature, he said, 'The world will little note, nor long remember, what
we say here; but it can never forget what they did here.'
"He was mistaken. The world noted at once what he said, and will
never cease to remember it. The battle itself was less important than
the speech. Ideas are more than battles."
And so the great slavery pioneer and the great emancipator will go
down in history together. How the world worships heroic manhood!
Those who, with sweet and unselfish natures, seek not their own
happiness, but are ready to die if need be for the right and the
truth!
Sumner aided in those three grand amendments to the Constitution,
the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth. "Neither slavery nor
involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime, whereof the
party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United
States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.... All persons born
or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction
thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein
they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall
abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States;
nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property,
without due process of law, nor deny to any person within its
jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.... The right of citizens
of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the
United States, or by any State, on account of race, color, or previous
condition of servitude."
In June, 1866, Mr. Sumner came home to say good-bye to his dying
mother. True to her noble womanhood, she urged that he should not
be sent for, lest the country could not spare him from his work.
Beautiful self-sacrifice of woman! Heaven can possess nothing more
angelic. O mother, wife, and loved one, know thine unlimited
powers, and hold them forever for the ennobling of men!
When Mrs. Sumner was buried, her son turned away sorrowfully,
and exclaimed, "I have now no home." He had a house in
Washington, where he had lived for many years, but it was only
home to him where a sweet-faced and sweet-voiced woman loved
him.
In 1869, Mr. Sumner made his remarkable speech on the "Alabama"
claims, which for a time caused some bitter feeling in England. This
vessel, built at Liverpool, and manned by a British crew, was sent
out by the Confederate government, and destroyed sixty-six of our
vessels, with a loss of ten million dollars. In 1864, she was overtaken
in the harbor of Cherbourg, France, by Captain Winslow, commander
of the steamer Kearsarge, and sunk, after an hour's desperate
fighting. Her commander, Captain Raphael Semmes, was picked up